Outstanding!
I wonder if having been screwed for so long, they have any concept of being governed in any other way.
From what I’ve heard about the NK leadership, their “craziness” comes from the precarious position they’re in. This is an administration that leads through fear, oppression, and propaganda. They are paranoid about being betrayed internally but that paranoia is justified. They need to put up a strong, aggressive front because to do otherwise is to show weakness and be even more vulnerable to being stabbed in the back (literally or figuratively).
I’m worried we’re getting into GD/IMHO territory now though. 
To some extent they do. heck, decades after Chairman Mao, the gardener in one of the local greenhouses in Beijing was being treated with excessive deference by some local peasants because he used to be the God Emperor. the same applies in Korea. After decades of being raised on how the Kims are near unto supernatural (apparently grandpa Kim Il Sung never had to use a toilet, and scored an impressive 37 under par when he decided to try golf) there are whole swaths of NK society who fall for that. When the previous leader dies, many people were genuinely crying. The more worldly, the children of the privileged class, are apparently becoming less enchanted with the whole society and, thanks to availability of illegal DVDs and cellphones, etc. are more aware of the outside world. But given the number of people delusional about politics, even in America, any surprise some people in NK fall for that? For the upper echelons, it’s more about keeping things shook up so there is much less for minions to have the opportunity to form alliances and cliques that might begin to discuss regime replacement.
The illusion we have about those sorts of societies is that the dear leader says “do it” and it gets done. In such societies bureaucracy still rules, and the key activity is to make sure that the inevitable failure cannot be blamed on you.
If he was powerful enough to overcome golf and the toilet, you’d think he’d have done something about that pesky death thing, too.
Granted, neither one of them seems very emotionally balanced. Kim, however, has the advantage of having been raised on the inside for his whole life. I would suspect that he understands a thing or two.
The other assumption we make is that either one of them could arbitrarily press the button. Between each leader and the first deployment is a chain of command that could pop at one of several links, to prevent the order from being carried out. Just as we had General Ripper manufacturing a holocaust, so too could we have a different kind of rogue General stopping it.
The apparatus of government tends to be pretty big. From here we get the impression that the Kims have been absolute despots, but I have my doubts. I suspect that NK is run by a venerable cabal and -un is not much more than the raving lunatic that the cabal wants us to focus on. How rational he is or seems to be probably has little bearing on how the country goes.
As for that other guy, well, I am not convinced that he is as dangerous as his people want us to believe.
There is a massive amount of international trade. All North Korea has to do is to fly its bombs in commercial airliners or ship the bombs via cargo ships to the United States.
They do have conventional aircraft large enough and with another range to haul a nuke and probably enough “patriots” willing to commit suicide to make that a feasible delivery mechanism.
If we knew we were at war, obviously those planes would easily be intercepted and shot down, but as a surprise attack I wager they could pull it off.
People get too focused on whether they have nukes they they can fit on ICBMs. ICBMs are a heck of a lot harder to intercept, true, but a Tu-204 or (possibly) a Tu-134 could probably sneak a weapon to Hawaii, Seattle (or further) as long as a state of war did not exist.
If a state of war did not already exist, then an unscheduled flight from North Korea to anywhere in the US would get increasingly-sternly worded warnings to turn back, before eventually being shot down. Similarly for a ship, though there they’d probably take the time to do an inspection first.
If Kim ordered a guy to press the button, and I didn’t, do you not believe Kim would have him shot with an anti-aircraft gun?
We perceive bowl-haircut-guy to be a despot, but I am not wholly convinced that that is the case. The military is where the country’s power lies, so they absolutely must be in agreement with -un for an attack to proceed. The DPRK government is rather opaque to us: it is not clear whether the insanity is at the top or is bubbling up from dark bureaucratic recesses and merely being enabled by the mouthpiece. -un may just be doing what he must to maintain his position and not anger his handlers.
[Nitpick] Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both air bursts. Ground bursts would have been significantly more nasty [/nitpick]
If their goal is to do damage to the US, sure, they’d sneak a bomb to the US somehow. But that’s not the goal of their ICBM / nuclear bomb program. The goal is deterrence, to prevent the US invasion of North Korea by raising the stakes. A nuclear bomb loaded on an airplane doesn’t work for that purpose.
I thought it was the other way around. A ground burst (detonation at the ground) does more damage in a site concentrated around the impact. Used to take out bunkers or missile installations. An air burst spreads the damage to people and cities, since more of them are exposed to the initial explosion.
Yup, an airburst causes dramatically more damage. You get a reflection of the shock wave off the ground that joins the main shock wave to form a Mach Stem, which is a vertical shock wave travelling outward from ground zero. It causes massive devastation. A ground burst causes less devastation but as it sweeps up a lot of material into the irradiated zone of the fireball it creates a lot more fallout.
There is no NK plan to prevent an invasion of North Korea. The NK government’s plan is to use their nuclear program as a bargaining chip.
That is an interesting possibility.
IMHO it is a possibility that cannot be overlooked. Kim du Jour*, is only in power at the sufferance of the career military. He doesn’t seem to have his father’s handle on calculated madness. Upping the ante keeps him as the guy in control, and keeps things at home on the back foot as well. It isn’t impossible he is a man who fears for his life if he allows things out of his immediate control. He might even be right.
- I wish I could claim credit for this, but I can’t.
“Have you heard the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?”
Not disagreeing, just continuing on from here. …
If so, that is a far *less *stable situation than him being really in charge.
Every dictator rides a tiger until suddenly he doesn’t. But some tigers are less willing or able to be ridden regardless of rider skill. And as many expert pundits have pointed out, Un has far less experience and arguably a lot less aptitude than his ancestors. How quickly and how well has/does/will he learn?
There’s already massive opportunity for miscalculation between NK and the outside world. Especially with the current US administration being what/how it is. Adding in the very murky situation between the multiple factions making up the tiger and the single rider is unhelpful to say the least.